Letter: Refinery deserves more energy than an events centre

To the editor,

I am confused and angered at the fact that Thunder Bay is once again passing up an opportunity to create great and lasting jobs for its populace.

Instead, city council, heads of infrastructure and business people are more concerned about the name of an hotelier and convention center that we don’t need because nobody has a job to pay for a ticket.

Why are we not expending our energy towards getting a refinery for the Ring of Fire mine? There seems to be far too much confusion about what this city needs.

Let me make it simple, we need sustainable jobs for our future, not a hockey rink. 

The time is now to secure our future.  This city spends money like it's water to do surveys and studies on things we don’t need until our jobs are in line.

If the people of Thunder Bay had good permanent jobs maybe we wouldn’t mind paying a little more in taxes to put in a hockey rink and improve the waterfront for other people to enjoy. 

Tourism jobs are relevant and are seasonal, what do we do for the other nine months of the year?

Pull your collective heads out and concentrate on employment not pleasure. As for convention centers and hotels, recently there has been talk of confiscating properties for unpaid taxes. Okay what about the Great West Timber property? 

The people who run businesses in Thunder Bay don’t count, but Buchanen doesn’t have to worry.  Are we afraid to upset him? 

Why are we not confiscating that property before he can sell it? It would solve the parking problem and it would still be downtown where most of the traffic infrastructure is already in place.

Come on Thunder Bay, I challenge everyone to come up with sustainable job ideas and publish them for all to see. Our city council needs serious help in this department it seems by the fact that they hide behind projects that only cost us money not create permanent jobs.



Sam Guzzo,
Thunder Bay